A Douglas councillor feels social housing in the island is ‘underfunded’.

After reports about people in Douglas living in flats that are ‘uninhabitable’, the local authority says any plans to sort the housing problem should be ‘island wide’.

Cllr Devon Watson says it’s not given any ‘priority’ by the government.

The local authority has also put measures in place to try and prevent people from being missed but says its dealing with ‘decades’ worth of problems. 
Cllr Watson, who is the chair of the housing committee, says a 10 year plan will be introduced to solve some of the issues.

He said: ‘I think what we’re dealing with as social housing authorities is decades worth of underfunding, and there are decades of decisions that we’re now trying to correct.

‘The longer you leave maintenance issues, the longer they’ll last.

‘We’ve worked with Department of Infrastructure to increase maintenance budgets for this year and upcoming years, which should reduce the number of these cases.

‘And secondly, we’ve introduced new reporting systems in the council. But if you do have issues with black mould, you report them, someone will come out, they will visit you, they will discuss.’

Mr Watson is encouraging people to email [email protected] and contact their local councillors and MHKs if they feel like the problem isn’t being addressed.

‘Hold government accountable,’ he said. ‘It’s not given that adequate attention and priority by government that it needs, which means that maintenance issues are inevitable.

‘We want to move people to more suitable accommodation, and that is a much, much more difficult task.

‘Every week we have allocation meetings where we have to choose who gets housing and who doesn’t, and sometimes we’ll have to choose between does someone get housing if they’re homeless or if they have to be moved out of a derelict property.

‘Until we properly fund social housing these issues will persist and that’s what we need to be working with central government to address.’

The councillor added: ‘We’ve got housing stock that’s been around since the 1890s, which means they will have higher requirements, so it needs to be an entire island approach in terms of how we deal with social housing and how we beat the housing crisis.’